Tag: ECMA-376

One of the key benefits of the Open XML file formats is that they support all of the things you can do in Office documents. If you’ve created documents in past version of Word, Excel or PowerPoint that have unusual or complex formatting, you can simply save as Open XML (the new default format) from…

I’ve been going through the final draft version of the Ecma Office Open XML spec, to put together some samples for a project I’m working on. And in the course of doing so, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many markup examples can be found in the spec. In the Markup Language Reference, you’ll find…

If you were intimidated by the large, dense Ecma draft spec for Open XML, things have changed: the latest release, working draft 1.4, is much more accessible. I’ve spent the last couple of hours with version 1.4, released last week, and it feels like a completely different document than the previous versions. It’s full of useful charts…

Baker & McKenzie’s London office has pubished a paper on the Open XML formats and the Ecma standardization process. It’s more about the legal and procedural aspects than the technical details, and it includes a plain-English overview of how the Covenant Not to Sue (CNS) works for the Open XML file formats. As they point…

I recently mentioned on this blog that the Ecma TC45 committee had released Working Draft 1.3 of the Office Open XML Document Interchange Specification. Today, I’d like to give a little more information about what’s covered and how it’s organized. It’s an intimidating document — over 4,000 pages — but it’s much more polished and…

Version 1.3 of the Ecma spec has been published as of today. It’s a huge document, with lots of detailed information for Open XML developers. Brian Jones has a nice overview on his blog, and you can go directly to the draft here.